There is no doubt that the resistance of the conscious and unconscious ego operates under the sway of the pleasure principle: it seeks to avoid the unpleasure which would be produced by the liberation of the repressed.

The only person with whom you have to compare ourselves, is that you in the past. And the only per-son better you should be, this is who you are now.

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.

How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.

The idea of life having a purpose stands and falls with the religious system.

Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is "Thou shalt not question."